The UK’s strengths in many parts of the sector, in radio and TV production and music especially, mean that we can play a bigger role in the world market.But success is not certain. Several factors – the global strength of American audio-visual products and the fast-changing structure of commercial production and broadcasting in Britain among them – could affect our progress.Major investment in British production and British talent will be vital, but is by no means assured. Let’s take TV: the economics of cable, satellite and digital TV in Britain mean that the big money has gone to rights-holders – the studios and football clubs – and very little has filtered into production. Some cable and satellite categories, like the children’s services, are dominated by imported programmes.The need to deliver early audience and advertiser success is having an impact on some traditional British TV strengths. Sitcoms, which often take several series to make a mark, are rare on commercial television; apart from a handful of titles on Channel 4, the form now depends on the BBC.

If we gave up, comedy would continue to fill our screens, but in 20 years’ time we would be gathering to celebrate brilliant American shows like Frasier rather than The League of Gentlemen.That’s why the BBC has a central role to play in nurturing and supporting UK production. This summer we announced a new strategy for BBC Television, backed by investment made possible by an increased licence fee and internal savings. The vast majority of this new money will flow directly into production – into everything from natural history and science to new British comedy like Coupling or People Like Us. Our proposed new channels, BBC3 and BBC4, will specifically support key parts of Britain’s creative industries.Next week we begin a public consultation to elicit the views of licence payers about our proposals.

Their opinion will be crucial in helping us shape the new services.BBC3 will back new comic talent, new programme-makers and new British music. And it will bring that work to digital households whose choice of viewing, beyond traditional terrestrial channels, is limited to content made for US audiences.The channel will regularly feature the art-forms and media which most interest younger audiences: movies, music, design, computer games and software. It will, wherever possible, focus on what is happening in Britain. In other words, BBC3 will support British television and creative industries in its programming and make coverage of the creative industries a real priority.BBC4 has a very different mission, but one which again will lead to direct investment in, and greater visibility for, some of Britain’s most precious creative resources It will be devoted to the world of arts and ideas. Archive, and particularly the BBC’s treasure-trove of outstanding music and arts from the past, will play its part.

The channel should reflect the cultural life of Britain.New technology and a new approach by talent unions and the institutions means there is a real prospect of bringing the best of Britain’s live arts – opera, concerts, theatre, dance – to TV viewers on a weekly basis. Investment in BBC4, combined with our big investment in music and the arts on Radio 3, means we will make powerful international alliances in arts television, bringing British artists and productions to world audiences.We are determined to back talent and the creative industries in all our TV and radio services. The BBC has a formidable global reputation as a producer of children’s programmes; we want to build on that with children’s channels that are rooted in original local production, and which are advertisement-free. We want to invest heavily in fiction for our main channels, particularly BBC1, and create more high-impact factual events like Walking With Dinosaurs.That series brought together many disparate strengths in the UK production base: classic story-telling skills, cutting-edge design and animation, fanatical attention to detail. This synthesis, as in Wallace and Gromit, was a breakthrough for the sector. Dinosaurs was an enormous hit in the UK and when our global partner, Discovery, transmitted it in the United States, it became the most-watched cable programme in American television history.